IT's Future: Less Building, More Bundling

With human resources, marketing and other departments going in different technological directions, IT's new mission is to tie all the company's services securely together.

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The future of corporate IT is less about building stuff and more about tying stuff together. I suppose this might be obvious to some folks, but it is worthwhile to step back and take a look at what is happening to business technology, budgets and the state of the IT profession. Consider the following three developments:

1. CMOs Spend Lots On Tech.

The marketing department -- you know, that group that is always going out to lunch and talking about brand development and cost per eyeball -- is now a major technology spender. Gartner analysts are predicting that by 2017 the CMO will spend more on tech than the CIO.

The language gap between marketing and IT might be the biggest chasm on the corporate landscape. Recently I took a look at a presentation from a marketing startup in San Francisco that is in the forefront of changing the Web ad model from measuring ads served -- a really weak proposition -- to ads viewed. Its metrics for measurement, heat maps and best practices makes great sense to the marketing group and would sound like Romulan to the IT group. Come to think of it, because many in IT are Trekkies, Romulan might sound more familiar.

The HR department, which used to be a backwater of forms, procedures and free donuts on Friday, is now a major technology spender. You don't have to look any further than the rapid growth of Workday, and in particular the mobile capabilities of Workday 18, to see a SaaS platform that enables team collaboration, time management and talent development. Workday's growth spurred SAP into spending $3.4 billion for Success Factors and was a major factor in getting stodgy Oracle to transform into a cloud advocate. Maybe the language gap between HR and IT is not quite as large as the marketing gap, but how many in IT have ever heard of human capital management (HCM) best practices?

3. IT Has A New Primary Role: Bundling.

The finance department, the manufacturing group, sales, and building services all are being wooed by software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors eager to get a foothold in your company. The BYOD trend means you don't even get to be the arbiter of who gets a new laptop or smartphone.

So, the building and owning stuff train has left the station. Although you are probably happy not to have to sit through one more requirements meeting about enterprise resource planning systems, you are probably wondering just what is your future role? I'll argue that the future role is vital, happening right now and probably unrecognized at your company. With each department out there contracting for the service that best meets their needs, one thing becomes clear: there is no one tying all these services together in a system that is secure, private, always available and in compliance.

I'm not alone in seeing this new role for IT. Nico Popp at the SilconAngle has a good article looking at the role of identity in a SaaS world. For many users the issue of identity is apparent in the frustration of maintaining multiple sign-ins. But the frustration of trying to remember which sign in goes with which service is, as Popp points out, only the tip of a very large iceberg. An employee has a role within the company that changes with each department: HR sees an employee one way, sales another and so on. An identity and privacy system that spans all those roles is about as nitty gritty an IT issue as you will encounter. IT's role as the glue that ties all those systems securely together is not going to get usurped anytime soon.

All good points to think about, and also probably not surprising at the same time that an increasing number of CIO's aren't coming from a straight tech background, many have a marketing and product development background as well.

A most excellent analysis, Mr Lundquist. What a paradox is at work here: IT is being forced to give up control of tech decision-making at the line-of-business level, while at the same time it's being called to assert more in the areas of security, compliance, and reliability. Ouch. Going to be tough for lots of CIOs and IT departments who aren't willing to adapt to what is a subtle, yet significant, change in roles. But you're right to be hopeful, too. I heard some IT mavericks speak recently and they all railed as much against the old IT stringencies as I'm sure many a biz user has.

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